5 Movies Josh Never Would Have Seen Without Donna
by SongbirdNoodles
Summary: 5 movies. 5 moments. 5 fics. Enjoy!
1. One: Bringing Up Baby

**5 Movies Josh Would Have Never Seen Without Donna**

_**One: Bringing Up Baby**_

It's a sultry spring night in Southern California, and Donna's starting to think she's never been this tired in her life. Apparently, being the sudden and completely out-of-the-blue frontrunner for the Democratic nomination mostly just entails even more work than being the out-of-the-blue underdog. It seems to mean more polling numbers that need to be picked up from the fax downstairs, sorted, highlighted and color-coded, more reporters to keep out of Josh's way, more phone calls to ward off and more staff meetings to attend, with Sam and Toby pacing around with an increase of intensity she didn't think was possible.

At ten-thirty, she slumps into her room, throws open the tiny window and cranks up the fan, peels off her clothes and slips into her PJs, one hand reaching for the remote to the tiny TV, the other finding a bag of groceries she managed to pick up before a rally in Santa Monica yesterday. She flicks through the channels, bypassing CNN without a second glance and stopping when Cary Grant flickers onto the screen, asking for a Mr. Peabody. With a barely suppressed squeal of glee, she nestles herself more comfortably onto her bed, turning up the volume just as Katherine Hepburn flicks an olive behind her shoulder.

She's lost count of the times she's seen this movie; it's one of her grandmother's favorites. Donna spent half of her childhood sitting in Granny Eily's den, watching _Gone With The Wind_, _Roman Holiday_ and _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_, while Granny's knitting needles clacked in the background and rain pattered onto the roof.

As Katherine Hepburn chats up an unsuspecting psychologist and then, in a whirlwind of haywire emotion even she can admire, cons poor Cary Grant into stealing his date's purse, she finds herself dreaming herself back to that time, being eight years old and giggling at the absurdity of all of this through a mouthful of Granny's gingersnaps, one ear listening for her mother's car in the driveway and hoping she'd decide to go to the store tonight before picking her up.

The truth is, some nights on this campaign, she barely feels a day older than that eight-year-old girl. She knows so little about any of this, there are days when locating the town and electoral district they happen to be in on a map feels like an achievement. She watches Katherine Hepburn's brazen million-words-a-minute banter unfold in front of her, the familiar longing of a shy little girl who wanted to be a little more like this as present as ever- but then she stops and thinks, and the realization his home with all the grace and force of the rock Susan launches at Mr. Peabody's head.

_That's not me anymore. _

She's not shy anymore, she's not hiding her giggles behind her fists and eating only one cookie because that's what you do, she's not waiting tables in an upscale coffee shop on State Street and stopping to pick up ingredients for a dinner made out of obligation on the way home, she doesn't do that anymore. She happily turns up the volume a little more, popping a third Oreo into her mouth just because she can, and feels her whole body relax. No matter how tired she is, now matter how sticky and no matter how badly she wants a bath, she realizes hasn't been this at peace with herself in a long time.

She's laughing so hard at Susan and David singing "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" while pulling on Baby's tail that she almost misses the knock on her door. Still giggling, she rolls off her bed and opens. It's Josh, and it's only now that she realizes all she's wearing is a pair of faded heart-patterned boxers and a tank top.

"Hey," she says, blushing slightly.

He grins at her, eyebrows raised. "Hi." Despite the amusement dancing in his eyes, there's something flat in his tone of voice, something in the shadows under his eyes and the way his shirt is half-dangling out of his jeans and his collar's askew that makes her bite back any comments about Donna-time and workaholicism. "We're going out –there's a bar across the street- you wanna come?"

She smiles at this, gestures to her attire and the TV in the background. "That's sweet- but I think I kind of need to take the night off."

He shrugs at this. "I know what you mean," he sighs. It's been three weeks since he rejoined the campaign, and there's something in his demeanor that makes her guess that the last thing he needs tonight is trying to keep up with CJ's mouth and Toby's drinking, stumbling out of a seedy bar at one AM, gripping the small of her back a little too forcefully; and wordlessly accepting the aspirin she'll hand him the next morning. And he also doesn't need to curl up on his bed with his tenth coffee and a stack full of polling numbers, staring at them like they're a Magic Eye Book, like patterns will emerge if you concentrate properly, until his eyes flutter shut at three in the morning.

She bites her lips and thinks of how much she owes him. "You wanna come in?"

He knots his eyebrows together. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, I'm just watching a movie, but you can hang in here a bit, if you want."

"I-" he hesitates for a fraction of a second. "Yeah, okay, sure." She steps aside to let him, peeling a thin long sleeve out of her unpacked suitcase and pulling it over her head. No matter how professional their relationship might be, she doesn't think it a good idea for her to be around him in a dimly-lit room wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and a clingy, red tank top whose shoulders keep sliding off to reveal the bows of her bra straps.

He's standing in the middle of the room with a lost look on her face, and that makes her smile as she hops back on the bed and pats the space next to her. "Josh, sit."

He does, cautiously at first, but then he catches her eyes, and with a loopy grin swings his body next to hers and focuses his attention onto the television. "What're we watching?" He asks, as an embarrassed Cary Grant buys 30 pounds of sirloin steak. "And is that a _leopard_?"

"Josh. You've seen _Bringing Up Baby_. You have."

"I really haven't," he remarks, as Baby slips from one car into another and Katherine Hepburn proceeds to steal said vehicle. "What on earth is happening in this movie?"

"She's a rich heiress, he's a nerdy, klutzy paleontologist. She's got a pet leopard. Really, that's all there is to say in terms of plot," she says, lapsing into a fit of giggles.

"This is bizarre," he remarks, and she feels like his grin has more to do with her obvious enjoyment than with the humor unfolding on-screen.

"It's one of the classics of the American film. Now sit back, shut up and enjoy."

"Kay."

Predictably enough, because it's a dark room quiet except for the television and nobody's badgering him about strategy or polling, and his phone isn't ringing and they don't need ten words on national security for the debate, and he's not arguing with anyone, he falls asleep after about fifteen minutes later. His body slides down the headboard of her bed and his eyelids flutter faintly. She considers waking him, but knows he won't sleep for another two or three hours when left to his own devices, and something in the way his body's curling up makes her heart flutter. She peels the thin covers out from under him and throws them over his form, gently running a hand over his arm before catching herself and immediately stopping. She turns the volume down on the television and tries not to laugh too loudly. She tries to focus on the action unfolding on the screen, she really does, but keeps getting distracted and nearly misses her favorite scene because she's paying way to much attention to the cute little snoring noise Josh keeps making.

As the credits roll, she flicks off the television and after brushing her teeth and giving her sensitive alabaster skin the kind of attention it requires, lies down next to him. His breathing is more regular than she's ever heard it, his whole body completely relaxed. Asleep, he looks younger, and much less haunted. She curls up beside him, closing her eyes, and there's something wonderfully comforting about the way their breaths are mingling, how perfectly the sound of his breathing fits in with the hum of the fan, and she falls asleep with a smile playing on her face.

She half-wakes in the middle of the night to find their hands entangled and her body arched around his, but she's too sleepy to see anything wrong with that, because in her barely awake mind, it doesn't feel wrong at all.

The next morning is a haze of awkwardness and elaborate scrambling to get him out of her room without anyone finding out. But there's something in the way the circles under his eyes are substantially less obvious, and something in the way his laugh rings louder as he teases CJ over breakfast, and something in the way his energy is more playful and less forced as he answers questions from reporters and gets into an argument with Toby on Health Care spin that's soothing to her.

As everyone's getting back on the campaign bus, he waves her over. "Listen," he says, frowning, "I'm really sorry about…"

"Don't be," she smiles, meaning it with all her heart. "Although, one day you're gonna have to actually see that movie."

"It's a date," he smiles. "And thanks."

"Don't mention it," she replies, her smile growing even wider. "Least I could do. And come on," she says, taking his hand and pulling him on the bus, "We've got a nomination to win."


	2. Two: Love, Actually

**Two: Love, Actually**

He's never been this bored in his life. Or this frustrated.

The New Hampshire primary is two weeks away, and he's sitting in a hotel room in Manchester, eating a Club Sandwich and channel surfing. His candidate is back in Texas. He's sent his staff home.

And it's only nine o'clock.

It's Peter Santos's birthday tomorrow, and when the Congressman had said that he would be in Texas for it, the entire staff –he refuses to call them team, they're too few, and something else about them is distinctly unlike the people he's become so used to working with- had looked at him like they expected him to forbid it. Like they were expecting him to crack under the strain, say something completely asshat-y and then the Congressman would fire him and they could go back to their calm ways.

Josh, of course, had not cracked. Nearly eight years of working side-by-side with Leo McGarry had taught him this, if anything: the candidate runs the show. He has to. He makes the rules and he makes the decisions, _he has to_. And eight years of working for Jed Bartlet had robbed Josh, at least temporarily, of the notion that candidates –that Presidents- sometimes made the completely wrong decisions.

Not that he was going to make Matt Santos skip his son's birthday. Not that he was going to do the completely assholic but oh-so-necessary thing where he yelled at the Congressman that he had to _want_ this. And that he had to understand that sometimes you had to get your fingers dirty in order to do the right thing.

Groaning in frustration, he downs his beer in one and chucks a balled-up T-shirt at the television, where Wolf Blitzer is stubbornly refusing to even mention Matt Santos.

"Shut up," he snaps, and flicks over to Fox News, where Ann Coulter is complaining about Arnie Vinnick, looking so pissed off he could have sworn green steam is coming out of her nostrils. It's more of the same on MSNBC, and he just hasn't got it in him to check the wires tonight. Kneading his forehead, he keeps flicking the remote, to ESPN, where the Mets are being mercilessly mocked, and CSC, where the Redskins are being taken for a ride. He wonders whether the universe hates him, and decides that it just might.

It's nine o'clock in New Hampshire, and he's bored and frustrated and _lonely_.

He misses them. It's hard to convince himself he's doing the right thing, when they're not there with him, his friends, his war-buddies, anchors to sanity in a business that went crazy a long time ago. He misses CJ's persistence and her laugh and her class, and the angular grace she presents herself with. He misses Toby's doleful look, his bleak matter-of-factness hiding a lot of passion for a country he can't bear writing off. He misses Sam's blue-eyed idealism and moments of supreme dorkiness. Leo's dry smirk and unshatterable belief in the good of people and politics, and the value of what they were doing; and President Bartlet's love of trivia and moments of shocking, beautiful statesmanship.

And he misses Donna.

The thought sneaks into his consciousness unbidden, but he knows it's been there, hanging out until the moment presented itself, and he knows it's true. He misses her. Her laugh and her questions and her eyes and those moments late at night, when the light at her desk was all he could see, and she'd be sitting there, feet propped up, reading a briefing memo with the cap of her pen between her teeth and a crease of concentration between her eyes as they flitted over the page, and he found it impossible to concentrate on anything else for a little while. If she were here now, he wouldn't be feeling like this. They'd be arguing or joking around, sharing food and he would be much, much surer of what he was doing. But she's working for that ambitious sleazebag and his cowboy-booted cardboard candidate, and the thought of that makes him ball his fists until he feels the crust of his sandwich turn into mush in his hands. The thought of Donna, wide-eyed Donna who always expected politics to be right and reasonable and got outraged when they didn't, working for everything he hated about his line of work made all his other frustrations pale in contrast. Best not to think about it.

He flicks through the channels, again, and, trying to get away from a now positively raging Ann Coulter as quickly as possible, finds himself turning on the hotel's movie channel by accident. Unsure whether to be relieved or disappointed it's not hard-core porn he's strayed into, he finds himself wincing when a rather unattractive blonde guy on screen pronounces a loud: "_Wisconsin babes_!"

_Well_, he thinks, _that was certainly uncalled for._

Because technology has never been his strong suit, he can't figure out how to get back to normal television, and finds himself strangely intrigued by the quirky, dry –_British_- dialogue and the host of characters. Then he realizes he's essentially watching a romance movie, and quickly turns the television off- only to flick it back on a few minutes later, because it turns out being alone in a quiet room without distractions or company is not pleasant, given his current state of mind.

"Worse than the total agony of being in love?" A little redheaded kid quips, and he groans and opens another beer.

It's not _The Godfather_ and it's not _Casablanca_, but it's entertaining and funny, and while he knows that he will never, ever tell anyone that Josh Lyman once spent an evening watching what might just be the girliest, cheesiest movie ever made, he finds himself being touched by the various stories, the gently fleshed out characters. While half his mind is far away, with Matt Santos in Texas or perhaps with Toby who will be up writing the State of the Union all alone, he's glad to focus on the awkward interaction between a British writer and a Portuguese housekeeper. It's not until the American President turns up that he really starts paying attention, and then the British PM goes postal at a press conference and he's nearly convinced that this is the stupidest movie ever made, except his heart is doing this weird tugging thing and he needs to stop himself from punching the air.

_You should have done something like that. Maybe Donna wouldn't have left if you'd done that kind of number in front of the White House Press Corps. Or maybe if you could dance like that, _the afterthought comes to him as Hugh Grant shimmies through 10 Downing Street.

He firmly tells his brain to shut up, opens another beer and turns up the volume.

But the thought returns, of Donna and the things he should have done to get her to stay, or maybe it's the combination of alcohol, tiredness and cinematic sentimentality that's making him miss her, the way her pale skin smells faintly of cookie dough and how her hair falls into her face, and the way she knew exactly what he was thinking when he himself had trouble figuring it out. He watches two characters fall in love without speaking the same language, and wishes he'd ever had the confidence to say something like this out loud. And when his heart starts to ache as a poor guy is forced to admit that he's hopefully smitten with his best friend's new wife, he realizes he is way too invested in this movie.

"_There was for Kate and Leo_," little redheaded Sam says quietly. "_There was for you. And there is for me. She's the one_."

A truly frightening concept occurs to him: what if this little kid has it more together than he does? What if Donna's been the one all along, and he was just too stupid to figure it out?

And things are going terribly wrong, and he thought women watched these kinds of movies to cheer themselves up, not to depress them even more? As he watches dreams fall apart and a marriage deteriorate, he wishes pretty badly that he could just go back to watching Ann Coulter in peace. He drains another beer. Politics, he can deal with. Human interaction, not so much.

He supposes Colin's adventure in Wisconsin is supposed to be comic relief, but it just depresses him even more.

At this point, he's had enough beers to admit the Joni Mitchell's haunting voice and the way Emma Thompson just sort of stands there is touching his heart in a very real kind of way, and then the little redheaded quip, who is quickly becoming something of a guru for him tonight, says something that makes him smile tiredly despite himself: "_But you know the thing about romance is, people never get together until right at the very end_." The sentence seems to hang in the air, it seems to mean something in an important way, and he grabbles around on his nightstand until he finds his blackberry –knocking over a half-empty cup of coffee from this morning in the process-, opens a new note and enters the sentence. The words blink up at him, blurred around the edges and terribly cliché, and he feels sick.

"What the hell?" He asks the room at large, and deletes it again, throwing his blackberry into the corner with a heavy sigh.

And can't keep his eyes away from the screen.

Then he's watching that pale-faced unhappy guy in love with his friends wife having more balls than he, Josh, has ever had in his life, and his eyes fill with unexpected tears. He wonders where Donna is, and wonders whether he could, for the life of him, pull of something like this. Holding up simple signs, telling her how feels. Wonders whether she would appreciate this, or if she'd just put on that new ice-queen look of hers that goes so well with that stylish new haircut he can't help but hate, and walk away. He punches his pillow and impatiently wipes his eyes, as everything –this room, the fact that he's drunk and watching a fucking romance movie in New Hampshire, the dinky version of Silent Night playing, and the fact that all the things he's ever wanted to say to Donna would never ever fit on a blank sign he could hold up in front of her- seems to close in on him.

"_It's a terrible, terrible mistake, Chubs, but you turn out to be the fucking love of my life._"

That, on the other hand, he could do. But Donna, he knows, would not be impressed.

Even the British PM and the badly-dressed crime writer have figured it out by now, and the unbearably cheesy final moments of this movie that make him remember why –apart from the fact that, despite recent evidence to the contrary, he is, you know, _male_- he hates love stories in every size, shape or form are just minutes away, and as a ten-year-old girl belts out _All I Want For Christmas Is You_, he switches off the television, but the silence is so sudden, so pressing and so god-awful that he immediately turns it back on.

"_Would you stay, knowing life would always be a little bit worse? Or would you cut and run?"_ He flinches, as though the woman on screen has dealt him a physical blow, and in a way, she has. "_You've also made a fool out of me… you've made the life I lead foolish too._" Was that what he had done? When he failed to do what he's started to think would have been the right thing to do, sweep her off her feet after Gaza with signs or a drumming solo or humiliating the leader of the free world at a press conference, did she feel like a fool? Did she cut and run, because cut and run she did, because she felt like an idiot for wanting him to do something like that? Or was he the fool in this scenario, because he wanted her to have wanted this, wanted him, and she never did?

Questions too confusing. Best not try to answer them tonight.

And the music is getting louder and his little redheaded Yoda is getting help from is Dad to get his act together –"You've got nothing to loose and you'll always regret it if you don't"- and he's wondering if there is such a thing as a God of Television who sent this movie his way, and whether he's getting the message right or not, and then little Yoda says, "Let's go get the shit kicked out of us by love," and before he knows what he's doing, he's sifting through the room to retrieve his blackberry. But now the badly dressed writer is speaking Portuguese and he's momentarily distracted by this amusing turn of events as he bends down on hands and knees, the room blurred and his head pounding, and he realizes with a softly uttered "fuck" that he is, indeed, drunk. Too much of his attention focused on the movie and his general coordination, it takes him a little longer than strictly permissible to scan the carpeted floor for the little black device, and he pokes at a dark shape which he realizes only once he's fished it out from under the bed with a clothes hanger is a discarded sock, and just as the music is reaching a climax that makes him suddenly and inexplicably think of Joanie and how bad she would tease him about this, he locates the little device under the curtains. He peels it out as the badly dressed writer speaks more Portuguese, and he can't really read the subtitles properly anymore, but whatever he's saying, it sounds heartening and gentle and beautiful.

He dials a familiar number, it's almost muscle memory, but he takes his time and a deep, steadying breath and even though he knows this is a really bad idea, this movie, this cloying, predictable, over-sentimental holiday special has convinced him that it's the only plan he's got.

He stares at the number on the display, heart pounding.

"_Thank you_," Aurelia says, on screen. "_That will be nice. Yes is being my answer. Easy question_."

He presses the green calling button as applause erupts.

"_You learned English_?"

"_Just in cases."_

He presses the phone against his ear. There's a mechanical beep, then: "_The number you have called is no longer in service. Please redial. If you believe you are hearing this message in error, please call our 24 –hour-service-hotline at 1-800…"_

The sound of the Beach Boys singing fills the room. Josh Lyman lets his blackberry sink in horror.

He turns off the television, and this time, it stays off.

He collects the empty beer bottles and stacks them on a plate for room service to pick up, strips down to his boxers, drinks a bottle of water and swallows a Tylenol. He rubs his eyes and crawls under his covers, turns off the lights and stares into the darkness, willing himself not see Donna right there.

In the silence, the music still rings in his ears.

_God only knows what I'd be without you…_


End file.
